


Interlude 1: Vaya

by MissKate



Series: to cherish what remains [3]
Category: Elfquest
Genre: Animal Abuse, Death, Depression, F/M, Gen, Infant Death, Postpartum Depression, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 14:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9905585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissKate/pseuds/MissKate
Summary: Vaya falls into a pit. Then life happens.





	

Vaya dreamed she was small, and chasing after her mother, while Kahvi laughed, flitting away. It was a game they had played often, in rare times of peace, when both troll and elf had exhausted themselves with war. Kahvi called it ta'ahl, and claimed that it had come from her father. She was old enough that no one, save possibly Urda, knew any better.

It was warm in the dream. She had been so cold, the snow creeping into their tent as the sudden blizzard raged outside. Rel had been crying, and Vaya made her stay awake, keep crying, as long as she was crying, she was alive, wasn't she?

Rel wasn't crying.

“Rel!”

She sat up.

She was in a pile of furs, in a house. Or was it a tent? It was round, made of hides. The wind whistled outside, but it was warm, with a fire in the centre, smoke rising through a hole in the roof.

Rel wasn't here.

Her clothes were nearby, neatly cleaned and folded. They smelled of herbs she couldn't identify, smoky and sweet. There was food, too, meat still freshly warm and smelling of herbs, and she attacked it, while her breasts, swollen and tender, began to leak milk.

“Vaya, you're awake?”

Mardu stuck her head in the tent, smiling. She was carrying Rel, who was making small, discontented noises, indicating hunger.

Vaya took the baby, and set her to her breast, wincing as she latched on. Kahvi had praised her grand-daughter's strong grip, and let her play with her spear.

“Where are the others?” She asked, once she was sure that Rel still possessed eight fingers, eight toes, and two perfectly pointed ears.”The deer? The wolves?”

“Resting, mostly, though Deshk has gone with our hosts to see if their traps have any fresh meat. The deer are tethered safely, and eating grass through the snow. Frost is probably fighting with the stranger's wolves, and Smoke is begging food from the owner of this tent.”

“Frost n'a teski sh'hen cubs, sa?” A stranger came in the tent, laughing.

Vaya stared. She couldn't help it.

He was lovely, with dark skin that looked as soft as a summer stream. Black hair wasn't unknown amongst her people, but his was of the sky between stars, shaved at the sides and back, with the middle combed and tied neatly back. His face was broad and open, with a kindly cast to his expression, a strong nose, and full lips that smiled as if it were habit.

He saw her confusion, and spoke to Mardu, who answered his question in the same way, words that Vaya caught the edges of, as if they had been muddled on the way to her ears.

“His people have a different kind of speaking than we do,” Mardu explained, when she saw her confusion. “At first we thought we'd all gone mad, but they sent it to us.”

“I'll send our words to you,” the stranger smiled gently at her. :If you like.”

Vaya hesitated. It sounded like magic, more magic than mere sending, and she was Kahvi's daughter enough to be suspicious of that.

But he had kind eyes

“Alright,” she set Rel down at her side, in case it hurt, or she dropped her.

His name, she found out in sending, was Hawksong. He had magic that called the birds out of the sky, so his mother had named him. The words he sent were softer than Go Back words, as if they;d been stretched and spun by this tribe, and notions, peace, home, wander, clan, horse, human, hawk, wolf, all flew into her.

And the sun, rising and setting, all fire and joy. The moons, in their dance, and a sky so full of stars it astonished her. Snow, blowing and still, took the blue light of the sky and threw it back.

The Horse Clan rode the sea of grass happily, had since the time of the High Ones. They had been taller then, and had bred the horses to match, a trait the animals carried to this day. The horses had been valuable, always, but given in trade to the humans, they had bought something far more precious, peace. A lasting peace, and to this day, the Horse was the mother of both humans and elves, making them brothers to each other. The humans brought words ahkape, caicikopa, tiwahe, that melted and blended with the elfin tongue, making it flow like water, instead of dropping like stones. There were others, too, spread across the plains, human and elf, part of this odd arrangement, this strange mosaic of brotherhood, and almost all were refugees, driven from one thing or another.

“High Ones,” Vaya whispered, as Hawksong finally withdrew.

He shrugged, and held out a cup of something warm and hot. She took it, drinking thirstily.

“We thought you were Wolf Clan at first, sorry,” Vaya winced as his words drew up, unbidden, a golden, dark eyed she elf, mounted on a wolf far bigger than Frost, or Smoke, or Little Grey. A long dead trader who'd borne her bounty of goods joyfully to her people long ago, before Hawksong was born.“I forgot how it affects you, at first, the word song.”

“Does it do that to everyone?” Vaya asked, picking Rel up again.

“So far, to all of us,” Mardu handed her some meat, hot and dripping with fat. “I haven't been minding it.”

The meat melted in her mouth, soft and tender, and Vaya ate with abandon, before remembering something else.

“What about Little Grey?” She had spent months combing and cutting out the mats in the little wolf's coat, sharing meat with her, and sleeping between her and Frost. It felt strange to be lying down without her.

Mardu looked mildly disturbed.

“She's gone.”

“Gone?” Vaya stared at her. “But why?”

Mardu looked troubled, and Hawksong shook his head.

“There's something you should see,” He said, voice soft, as if with disbelief.

They led her out into the snow. The air was dry and sharp, glittering with ice, and snow that crunched under their feet. Marit and Kori were teasing and being teased by a few young Horse elves, one of whom was going so far as to lean on Marit's shoulder, and pat the top of her head, which was at least a hand or so lower than his.

Frost and a huge wolf with white stripes were nipping playfully at each other outside a strange hut, woven of bark and wood. Smoke was rubbing snow into his fur a few feet away.

Hawksong shook the door to the hut, calling out, “Morningbright!”

There was a moment of silence, then rustling, and a maiden opened the door, as dark and bright as Hawksong, but somewhat smaller in stature, wearing a colourful hairpiece in the shape of flowers. She put her hands to her mouth, hissing.

“I just got him to sleep, poor cub, and if you've woken him up, hawk-brother, I'm going to pluck you like a hen.”

“Sorry,” Hawksong said, then motioned to Vaya and Mardu. “I wanted to show him to them, though. They don't seem to have any idea what's happened.”

Morningbright stepped aside, and led them to a small sling, suspended from the corners of the house.

“He's eaten,” she said, worriedly. “I thought Snowtrack might be upset, but she seems to think he's like any other cub.”

“Little Grey brought him to her,” Hawksong said, softly, as Vaya approached the cradle swing. “As if she sniffed out Morningbright's trail.”

“Well, I'm the only Wolf Clan member in the village,” Morningbright laughed softly, a low burr in the back of her throat.

Vaya reached out, and tugged the blanket down gently. She had to restrain herself after from pulling her hand back as if it had been burnt.

There was something to the cast of his face, to his soft, grey fur, that made her think of Little Grey. The same grace that had drawn Vaya to the she wolf when they'd been trapped together in that pit.

The rest of him-

It was if an elf who had never seen a wolf had decided to make one. They'd gotten the fur right, the claws, but the rest was elfin, pointed ears, soft, baby-ish face, large eyes, now closed, with thick dark lashes.

“We were lucky that I kept duck's feet over the summer. None of us needed it for milk, but it's good for aches and pains, too,” Morningbright pointed to a bundle of dried herbs over the cradle. “Mother always told me it gave sweet dreams to little ones.”

She turned a solemn gaze onto Vaya.

“The wolf, do you know where she came from?”

The pit had been dark and Klik's bones, well chewed, only identifiable by his tattered clothes, had nearly tripped her while she laid her spear at Frost's throat, waiting.

“We were caught in a pit trap together,” She told them, staring at child, feeling somewhat sick. “She protected me.”

When Smoke had taken advantage of his colour, blending with the wall to take her unawares, Little Grey had thrown herself at him, ferocious beyond reason, driven him back, and given Vaya enough time, in the end, to use her mace to carve out a path back to the surface. They had all followed up, and gone from predators to reluctant allies to friends.

“Oh, pit traps can be deadly,” Morningbright shivered. “There's one not far from here, it swallows up everything from tree-eaters to mice.”

So they weren't out of troll territory. Vaya felt her heart sink, but the baby seemed more important at this moment.

“I knew she was pregnant a few moons ago,” she explained. “We were out on the plains, and I felt the cub move in her.”

“I think the grey-white one is his father,” Morningbright smiled. “He certainly smells like it.”

“He acts like it, too,” Hawksong laughed, as the huge wolf pushed him and Vaya aside to stare at the baby, grumbling gently.

“I don't know why the cub looks like that,” Vaya said, as Morningbright showed her to a mound of furs. “If Frost is the father. Little Grey was a wolf, I'm sure of that.”

“I know,” Morningbright smiled into a pot of stew, then ladled it out into clamshells. It smelled of smoked fish, and roots floated with shredded flesh in a white sauce. “We have legends of such a being.”

She told it over the meal, while Vaya fed Rel and let her suck fingerfuls of gravy. One of the legendary High Ones, who retained enough of the old powers that she could change her very shape. She used this to feed her people, until a fateful day when she brought a young, golden-furred cub into their encampment. The cub had grown up to be a great leader, and his son had struck out on his own, fathering his own wolf-blooded tribe that eventually settled here, on the plains, with the Horse People.

“Now she's done it again,” the baby had awakened during the telling, and now Morningbright fed him. He suckled silently, eyes still closed. “I wish she hadn't gone so fast.”

Vaya shrugged. “Maybe she went back to the Palace.”

“What's a palace?” Morningbright asked.

Vaya swallowed her food, and started her own story.

...

Perhaps there had been a time before Kahvi. But she was the only one alive from that far distant time, before trolls and before the Palace, so it seemed as if the universe had come into being with Kahvi. She had sprung fully formed, it was said, from a pool of water, specifically in order to lead them to battle, to the Palace.

Vaya had grown up safely in her mother's shadow. If she had had to run a little faster, or hit a little harder, than other warriors, she counted it a price well paid for the knowledge that she would never have to take her mother's place. Her mother, rough and ready with blows or with fierce bear hugs, was immortal.

Vaya couldn't have said how old she was. The years had begun to blur together after she came of age enough to join the warriors. She was among the younger warriors, but fawns born to peers who had long since died had had fawns of their own and died. Yet she wasn't an elder.

The Palace was an unseen, oft spoken presence in their lives. Just over the ridge, and forever out of reach, it guided their every move. Peace was an impossibility without the Palace, without the call. To answer it, after all, was everyone's dream, and no one thought it would be realized within their lifetime.

Yet.

What had been before the call, before the war? Wa there anything before the Palace? Who were they, without their battles and their answer?

Fawn questions, set aside for the urgency of the war. Vaya had asked them herself once, when she sat at her mother's knee, trying to wrap both hands around her mother's spear shaft. No one had an answer, and they ruffled her hair and offered to wrestle with her.

Vaya had grown in the shadow of mountains, and been a warrior from her first steps. She swung her troll-stolen mace with abandon, and laughed in the face of danger. She did what was expected of her, and did it well.

Klik and she had danced, briefly, during longest night, and they had been tender with each other for moons after.

Then he disappeared. One minute with the hunters, the next gone.

Vaya hadn't wept where anyone could see her. She had danced for him, biting her lips to keep from speaking, and her mother had nodded approvingly.

She hadn't known what happened for months, then, the pit.

...

The scent of rot greeted her first. Rotten meat, sweet and laced with dung and piss. She was still pregnant, the baby moving, despite the fall.

The growling was next. Not a bear, and nothing was chewing on her.

She opened her eyes and looked into Klik's.

The skull was bare, empty, eye sockets clearly marked with toothmarks. His identity was made clear by an earring that lay beside it, and that was also chewed.

She became afraid.

_I'm going to die here, too._

The little grey wolf, she noted, rising up despite her dizziness, seemed to be either defending her, or defending its meal, from the huge grey wolf.

Then a black shape threw itself at her from out of the darkness, and she barely sidestepped it, bringing her mace down, missing it. It came and left like smoke, and she tripped on one of Klik's ribs, nearly falling again.

She vomited, and the black wolf ate it.

They were starving, she realized, and saw other elf bones, bear skulls, deer legs, a midden heap of suffering.

They hadn't fallen in. It was a simple pit trap. The last one they'd come across had had a bear at the bottom, already dead.

The bear had made them all laugh. Something about this, the wolves, made Vaya's head spin with rage, and she had used her mace to carve a step ladder out of the walls, working over two days, unseen by the occasional troll passing by. They were fighting some war amongst themselves, she gathered from their gossip, and left her be.

She fought Frost, who she named for his white tipped fur, twice, and bested him both times, finally coming to a kind of rough consensus. Smoke, she fought over and over. The long, black wolf was hungry and angry, and wanted to eat her.

Little Grey hung back. Sometimes, looking at her, Vaya had the sense she was ashamed. Why, she didn't know.

The night they finally escaped, she tucked Klik's earring, and his old sword, into her coat. She had some idea that she would give it to the child.

They were unlucky. They came across a troll. He was young, barely able to use his spear, and he wept for his mother as he died.

Kahvi, in a rare display of affection, warmed her bathwater with her own two hands, even consenting to allow the wolves inside, and giving them the remains of a bear that she'd taken down during Vaya's absence. Otherwise she behaved as if Vaya had been on a hunt or a scout, and gone a little longer than expected.

Mardu put her hands all over Vaya's barely swollen belly.

“Nothing wrong that I can see,” she declared, finally. “You should rest that head for a few days, though.”

The wolves watched over her through the night, occasionally growling when they thought someone was too rough in waking her, and took over after that. In a few days, when she was pronounced well enough to go on guard duty, they stayed at her side, Little Grey under her arm, and Frost and Smoke at her shoulders.

The old cub questions began to swirl in her again.

What was the Palace?

They'd been searching for it since before they were Go Backs. Someone old had known where it was, and they'd followed it as long as they could. Then they'd had no further to go. So they'd stayed. And someone had found Kahvi, fully formed in a pool of water, meant to guide them to the ancient home of the High Ones. What happened before that was a mystery. They'd been taken from their home. They were returning.

It was a lodge. Vaya had always pictured it like their wooden homes, logs hewn together, but bigger, floating with spirits. It was the first and final home for all elves, all Go Backs.

Who had driven them from it?

Not the trolls. Five fingered giants, with round ears and small eyes. No one had seen anything like them since. They had appeared like a storm, and disappeared the same.

But trolls kept them from it. They had appeared from the earth as the Go Backs were crossing the ridge, and slaughtered hunters who, until; moment, had only raised their spears to deer. Their numbers had been reduced by more than half, and they'd been forced away, into retreat, back to the valleys.

Half-mist, Kahvi, in a sending image passed from mother to child, had stood on a stone, and proclaimed them Go Backs, declared them warriors, and ground her spear into the dirt. She'd done her part, and the call of the Palace had done the rest.

She thought of Klik. She couldn't remember his face, just his skull, covered with toothmarks, the remnants of his legs.

“Calling us to death,” Vaya had mumbled into Frost's fur. He had nibbled on her mittens and grumbled.

She thought of Klik and of Merna and of all the age mates who had grown up, had fawns, and died. She thought of their fawns, who had also died. She thought of the first few hunters, eaten by trolls. She thought of the troll boy, crying for his mother.

The Palace's call felt like the pit, the loss of footing, the sudden pain and blackness, the scent of rotten meat and dung.

She felt sick, and went to drink some of Mardu's horrible tea.

...

Rel was born in a storm. It could have been dawn, or midnight, for all Vaya knew, but it was black outside, and the pangs started, and she shit all over the rug while she pushed the fawn out, and for a moment the baby didn't cry, and Vaya, relieved, thought she might be dead.

Better to die there, better to die quiet and warm on soft fur than on cold stone. Better to die with her mother beside her, than weeping for her and alone, too aware of what was to come.

Then Urda, with a competence due to eights of years watching fawns born, had wiped the baby's face clean, and breathed air into her lungs. She'd begun crying, and Vaya had placed her at her breast with a weary sigh.

Later, she thought about drowning her in the bath, then of both of them going out into the snow and lying down and waiting. Frost and Little Grey followed her out, though, and lay down beside her while Smoke kept watch.

So she couldn't die, and the fawn couldn't die, and they would have to live, so she named the baby and set about the work.

You stayed in the lodge while you were nursing, worked with the baby at your breast or on your back. You worked, and told fawns to get out of the way, and you lifted logs and built the fire, and you beat the furs, and did all the things you did while you were nursing, or if the trolls had finally taken enough off of you to keep you from battle. You usually tried not to think.

But she started talking to Deshk, who was old enough that his face had sprouted fur, and who could lift entire trees, despite his twisted leg.

He laughed at her at first. Then, when he realized she was serious, he sobered, and told her to go away.

He came to her later, while she was nursing Rel, and asked her to come help with a fawn in the corral.

“I only remember what my sire told me,” he said, petting the little beast. It was limping, but it would recover.

“Before we came here, before Kahvi. There was another chief. I don't know his name. He found Kahvi, told everyone he was her father, he'd lost her somehow.

“We lived in the valleys, then. We were wanderers, searching for something that most of us had forgotten. I don't know if it was the High Ones' Home. He gave the idea it was something that you couldn't touch, a feeling.”

“A purpose?” Vaya asked. It would have made sense, knowing her mother, who spoke of grandness and destiny, when warriors were bleeding out on her fur. It had satisfied Vaya, once. Now she just washed the furs out, and thought about Rel washing out her furs when she died. If she lived th

Deshk shrugged.

“When the trolls came, not everyone stayed,” he began to trim another deer's hooves. “He said that a good two eights and two of elves just left. Said they weren't going to die for something they couldn't see or touch, and disappeared. My sire said his mother left that way, but his sister wanted to stay, and so he did, too.”

So people had left, disappeared into the world.

“Where do you think they went?”

Deshk looked down into the valleys.

“We were on a great plain, once,” he said. “I remember that the snow was as deep and wide as a lake, and every colour I'd ever seen was in the sky.”

Vaya thought about it.

“Were there trolls there?”

Deshk shook his head.

“Just deer, and bears, and sometimes humans. The round ears,” he clarified, seeing her blank expression. “Those who drove the High Ones from the Palace.”

So there were enemies there, too. But more space. The world was huge, and they could leave if the humans found them.

She thought of snow as deep as the lake, and shifted Rel to her other breast.

She and Deshk talked often after that, under the guise of tending the deer, cutting wood, or building a new shed.

She told him about the pit trap one day.

“Klik probably broke his neck on the way down,” he said, twisting a rope. “Died before he knew it.”

Which was comforting.

She asked him, finally.

“What is the Palace?”

“The ancient home of all the elves, you know that,” he snapped. It was warm, and his leg was aching. She pushed, anyhow.

“How do we know it's there?”

“We can feel the call.”

“How do we know the call is from the Palace?”  
“We just know, girl!” He threw down the rope in frustration and fixed her with an irritated glare. “What is the matter with you?”

She was shaking, she found, with excitement and anxiety. She had never told anyone, never even whispered to Rel.

“I think it's a trap.”

“Troll dung,” Deshk told her. “Troll dung and bitternuts. You've gone snow mad, girl.”

“But think about it!” She took his arm, and sent. **We've never even seen so much as a glimpse of it, not even a rooftop, not from the tallest peaks. We send warrior after warrior to their deaths, we're eaten away year by year, but not so much as a peep from any spirit, or anything. We've been at war since before I can remember, since nearly before you can remember, but we never gain an inch. And the call gets stronger every year, with every death!**

That last one, she had almost made up, although the call had grown some eight years back, a pulsing beat that settled in the heart, just after a small party had been lost in an avalanche. It had never done that before, and they'd lost more since, so she didn't know if it counted.

Deshk was looking at her with a terrible understanding, growing paler as she watched.

“My sister,” He said, slowly. “Her sons and her daughters. My sons and daughters.”

She shouldn't have said anything, she realized. She should have kept this to herself. Better to think that all the deaths, all the sorrows, meant something. Anything.

“Never mind,” she said. “It must have been snow blindness.”

She didn't talk to Deshk for a long time.

Then Marit came back with half her foot missing. A stupid, young mistake, a troll had seemed dead and had just enough strength to maim her.

Marit was Deshk's granddaughter.

“Now I'll never die a warrior's death,” was the fawn's reaction. Just two eights years old, and already thrown on the midden, she seemed to say, lying back on the furs with a defeated air.

“There are still lots of ways you can help,” Mardu tried to soothe her, but Marit ignored her. Ignored her, ignored Deshk, ignored food, ignored water.

She was small, slight, and had carried a spear to match. She had no desire to set it aside for a walking stick. She was pretty, with a sweet face, and large, dark eyes, yet to attain her full growth. Warriors had begun to notice her before her first battle, and they hadn't stopped now, and the teasing seemed to make her worse.

“You can bear more warriors,” Tek said, leering at her, then was shocked when Deshk picked him up, and flung him across the lodge.

“What was that for, you crazy old lodge-builder?”

That was Tek's sister, Kel, who was helping her brother up.

“Lodge-builder,” Deshk spat. “Lodge-builder, cripple, old buck with no balls, all that, yes. But I can still get a rutting stag away from a fawn. Try me, or her, if you dare.”

“You've gone mad,” Tek said, drawing away. Fumbling for the door.

Marit sat up for the first time in days.

“Grandather?”

Deshk whirled, and Vaya hid her smile by pretending to inspect Rel's feet.

“I'm hungry,” Marit said. “And I want to get up.”

...

And Deshk had apparently spoken to Marit, and Marit apparently spoke to others, to crippled warriors, to lodge-builders, and child tenders, to her peers and to others.

“There's nothing there.”

Kori had almost bled out in the snow before, had been white as death when he'd come back to the lodge. His heart had stopped and with it his breath, and they'd been about to declare his bed free when he'd sucked in a great breath and his heart had pounded like drum.

“When you die,” he continued, at her Vaya's blank stare. “It was a black emptiness, filled with screams. Terrible fear and pain. And nothing.”

He smiled mockingly at her. “And all that for a place in the songs, and a warrior's dance.”

More came after him. Doubting, fearing, hating. Some came to tell her to stop Deshk, to stop Marit, to say it was all a mistake, a lie.

She couldn't stop it. She hadn't really started it.

It came to a head as summer reached her zenith, when the floods were starting to recede, and the glacial streams calmed. Deshk and Marit were still twined together, working to build the lodge, working to keep the deer, but always working, and Tek and Kel were talking, always talking, mockery and lectures and cruelty.

Rough embraces and bluff jokes, warm hands, bear broth and roast boar. All the fawns could expect love and care and kindness and teaching and firmness in their turn, and if you were wounded, or sick, someone was always there.

But under it all, to the side, a darkness. It rarely surfaced, usually in the battle rage, but sometimes, like now, when warriors felt entitled, by virtues of sword and spear, to take what they thought was theirs.

The fiercest of them, the roughest and wildest, would never force a half grown fawn to bear a fawn, or even roll in the furs, so most told Tek and Kel to shut their mouths. So Tek and Kel turned to what Deshk was saying, what Deshk said Vaya said.

_“They say there's nothing there. No Palace. Just trolls, and something eating us all.”_

If they meant to silence it, they didn't. It spread.

The bear broth tasted off, the furs were cold. For the first time since they had become who they were, the Go Backs began to split, to splinter. At first it was just the warriors, versus mostly the lodge-builders and sentries, then it spread.

Mardu became pregnant. Again. And her daughter died. Another.

Sherra had been Vaya's agemate. She was leaving behind three fawns, one barely off the teat. Mardu was holding that one in her arms, staring at Sherra's corpse, one of the few that made it back to the lodge.

“Dance for Sherra, warriors! For she who made it over the ridge, to the home of the High Ones, to her father's arms! Dance! Dance!”

Mardu didn't move.

Spears flew, legs and arms twisted in glorious motion, hands were held in a great circle of young and old.

Mardu sat by the fire, and stared into the centre of the circle.

Eventually the pipes died. The drumbeats stopped. Mardu broke through the rising silence.

“I'm tired of this.”

She left the circle, putting the baby in her sister's arms, and came back with some packed bags.

“Mardu, what are you doing?” Urda took her arm, and Mardu jerked away.

“I'm not staying here,” she snapped. “I'm not watching another fawn die, I'm not birthing another baby to watch it die. I'm tired of it.”

“Sherra died for a great thing,” someone said.

“She died for the Palace,” someone else said. “A warrior's death.”

“She died because Kahvi says there's something over the hill,” someone else said. “No one's seen over the hill, so it's not like we can say.”

The wind picked up, and tossed the tundra grasses.

“There's nothing over the hill,” Kori's voice rose above the rest. “We're being eaten, one at time, by a blackness that swallows us all.”

Kahvi's jaw tightened.

“Even if there is something over the hill, is it worth it? All this pain and death, children dying. Five of mine, alone. Seven of their fawns.”

The voices rose and rose. Spears were raised, and swords were shaken, while the fawns watched in fear and concern.

“It's there, right over the ridg

e, we've all felt it, every day of our lives. Have you all gone snowmad?”

Vaya wrapped her arms around Rel and herself, felt the baby's little breaths.

“I'm not staying here,” Mardu drew the children to her side. “None of us are staying here.”

“Let us pack, too,” Deshk tapped Marit on the shoulder, and she followed him reluctantly into the lodge, glancing over her shoulder at them.

The arguing ros e, and Vaya went and packed her own things, leaving her mace behind, taking a smaller knife. No one seemed to have noticed she had been gone.

“You don't need any deer,” Kahvi was saying, nearly yelling. “Die on the hills, like the trolls you are!”

“We tended the deer while you were all off dying and fighting for nothing, they're as much ours as anyone's!” That was was Deshk.

Frost and Smoke were shifting from foot to foot, and whining. They came over as soon as they saw Vaya, and nudged her away from the crowd. Little Grey hung back, whimpering.

“Let them have the deer,” Urda urged Kahvi. “They're hardly taking anything else.”

Kahvi looked as if she would have hit someone, then she saw Vaya.

“Take the deer,” she said, coldly. “Take whatever you want, just get out of my sight.”

Vaya knew that was as close as they would come to goodbye.

In the end, they took took two eights and four of deer, and three eights of elves. Frost and Smoke took the lead, and Little Grey took up the rear. They glanced back, again and again, until they rounded the hill, and left the lodge behind.

They were menaced partway, by a stalking cat and by trolls, Both left them the further they went, until they were alone, among trees that blocked out the sun.

“This way,” Deshk led them through the thick woods, on an ancient path only he knew, down to through the pines, and they began to thin out, pines replaced by leafy brush among copses, to lone trees in tall grass, and finally, out into the open, where the call died, at last, and they stood before the plains.

They had no end. The low hills grew smaller and smaller, and the winds turned the grasses like waves on a lake. Little Grey yipped and Frost and Smoke grumbled contentedly, stretching out their legs. The fawns caught the grasses in their hands, letting them flow through their fingers in wonder.

They were going south. That much they knew by the sun, and it was morning, so the sky spread in blues and blinding whites over the grasses, which now spun red, now gold, now green, now silvery-grey.

Vaya stopped them by a lake.

“Rel needs to sleep,” she said. “And the fawns, they're not used to this.”

“We can keep up!” Merle, Sherra's eldest, insisted. “Grandmother, tell her we're fine!”

That was when her sister, Laski, let out a great yawn, which made everyone smile.

The water was clear, but Deshk insisted they boil it before drinking, based on some old memory. Mardu laughed at him, but he insisted.

Moons passed. They had furs, they had tents, they made things and brought them, but the storm came on suddenly, one minute the sky was clear, the next they couldn't see their hands in front of their faces.

...

“We were freezing to death,” Vaya finished.

“That was when we found you,” Hawksong said. “The horses heard you on the plains, and made us come to you.”

“The boy-cub should be taken to the Wolf Clan,” Morningbright said. “But I couldn't bear to take him now, not so soon, in this weather.”

Vaya knew excuses when she heard them, and kept her mouth shut.

“Where were you planning on going?”

That came from behind them. She turned, and saw a tall elf, with a long, prominent nose, delicately tilted eyebrows, and full, gentle lips. He was entering through the hide door, carefully closing it behind himself.

“We rescued all your stuff,” he held out his hand and she took it, noting a firm grasp. “You had enough food, but your tents weren't wind proof enough. You've never been on the plains, have you? Just that elder of you.”

“This is our chief,” Morningbright seemed to be repressing a smile. “Sunwind, this is Vaya.”

“You could stay among us, if you want,” Sunwind actually winced. “Even just long enough to learn the winters here.”

“Yes, if nothing else,” Hawksong nodded eagerly, then blushed, looking embarassed. “I don't mean that your people can't take the cold, it's just-”

“It's just we'd rather not stumble across your sodden corpses in the spring,” Morningbright finished for him. “It frightens the children.”

Vaya hesitated, and glanced at Mardu. Mardu just shrugged, hands resting on her rounded belly.

“I'll have to talk to my people about it,” Vaya said, slowly. “I'm no chief, you see.”

“Take your time,” Morningbright said. “Rest. Think.”

...

_Three years later..._

The sun beat down across the small village, as if it had decided to focus its rays there, and there alone. The horses stoically accepted the heat, but the deer clung to the shade of their small shed and glared balefully at their fellow beasts, who still had enough energy to occasionally roll in the grass.

Vaya glared out over the plains, west to where Sunwind and his folk were raiding the Red Fox Clan over a dispute on hunting territory and the ownership of several horses. She would have been with them, but the last few moons had made moving more and more difficult.

She winced as pain shot through her again, starting at her belly and ending in her back. Frost licked her hands, whining a bit.

“Rel!”

The little girl drew away from her small group of friends, and ran over. A good Go Back child, Vaya thought, despite her Plainsrunner clothes and hair. She was smiling, and reached out to touch her mother's stomach, but Vaya intercepted her, gently.

“Go to the field,” she ordered, giving her daughter a handful of berries to make up for her hard tone. “Tell your father that your brother will be here soon, so he'd better wash up and come quickly.”

Mardu and Birchwhisper were waiting for her in Mardu's lodge, comfortable birthing swing ready, hotwater, and soft cloths traded from far to the southwest. The human woman picked her up as soon as they entered, depositing her in the swing with ease, careful to keep the door shut, preserving Vaya's dignity.

It took as much time as Rel's birth, only replacing Vok's piping with Birchwhisper's soft humming. He came into the world with soft cries, which Vaya stilled by nursing him, and a shock of black hair. He had his father's nose, she could see at a glance, and she loved him twice, for himself and for Hawksong.

Rel and Hawksong were waiting outside when Birchsong and Mardu pronounced the baby healthy and Vaya well enough to recover at home. Hawksong carried the baby in one arm, and Rel in the other. Rel glared dubiously at the newcomer, clearly somewhat disgruntled with the addition.

“Let's name him Teir,” Vaya said after she'd been comfortably ensconced in her furs again, clean and rested, though in some pain. Frost stationed himself at her back, and Smoke came in, sniffed the baby, and left, clearly having more important things to do.

“”Wanted One”,” Hawksong murmured. “It's a fine name. It suits us, all of us.”

“I don't want him,” Rel pouted in her bed. “He hurt Mama. And he doesn't do anything.”

She rolled over and sat up, glaring at them.

“I told you I wanted a _big_ brother. Not a baby!”

Vaya blinked, uncertain how to respond. Hawksong hid his smile by leaning over to pretend to check the baby's moss.

“Ugh!” Rel flopped back onto her bed. “You better make another one. A big one.”

It was such an odd, unrealistic wish. Vaya enjoyed it, running it over in her mind. Her childhood had had no room for such outlandishness. She relished it.

**May you have such fancies, too, my son,** she sent to Teir, who was beginning to wake up and cry. **May you dream dreams of smoke and fire.**

Outside, the sun began to set, framing the small lake and its little groves of trees in soft oranges and yellows, while the noise of singing and working and living continued outside. She could see, through the windows, Daeshk, Marit, Redgrass, and Rain Falling in the fields, among the squash and beans and corn, weeding and digging. The sweet smell of the summer heat hung heavy over all, and mixed in was smoked meat and sweet herbs, burned to keep insects away.

It wasn't perfect. She was too hot, her body ached and stung, and she was beginning to get a headache.

It was home, though.

She slept, then, contented.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what I'm trying to accomplish here, but I always felt that the Plainsrunners being dropped was bullshit. This is the beginning of my take on them.


End file.
